AAGA CENTRAL: Evangelism & Missions Department

1. Setting Up a Regional Facilitating Committee – RFC

The department observed in the Gabon General Assembly that apart from Nigeria Missions Department which is fully organized with a Missions Board, the other eight national churches would require external support and commitment of the CAAGA department to assist it in re-organizing it's National Missions Board, to enable aggressive missionary operations in these countries. Consequently, there would be the need to set up a Regional Missions Board that would be coordinated by the Evangelism and Missions Director. In addition to the National Missions Directors of CAAGA member nations being members of the Board, other eminent personalities drawn from the region and the US Missions regional director will serve on the Board. The Board will help to guide the Director to facilitate the Missionary operations of the Department. The Board will mandate the Director to set up Evangelism Taskforces and Committees that will facilitate the missionary programs in the region. The Joint Action Committee comprising the network of these taskforces and committees, represented by their chairmen, will then constitute the Regional Facilitating Committee. In other words, each member of the regional facilitating committee RFC – heads a critical aspect of the work and is therefore, task oriented.  No member is an observer. Progress Report from each taskforce or committee will be reviewed during meetings. Details of the functions of this Joint Action Committee or regional facilitating committee will be spelt out in the Regional Missions Manual to be approved by it and the Executive Committee of CAAGA.

2. Setting up a Regional Missions Center in Abuja – Nigeria to coordinate activities:

The enormity and sophistication of the 21st Century Missions in Africa will require a very strong operational base that will fully network, not only within its regional constituency, but with international networks and embassies for the issuance of traveling papers and other logistic arrangements. It would need to painstakingly identify, critically assess and strongly advocate the support of governmental and non-governmental organizations (both secular and religious) in facing the challenges posed by economic, political and social conditions of the continental sub-region due partly to neglect and political mismanagement. These external support would then become missionary tools. In providing public relations functions, the office will by default bridge the communication gap and resolve logistic complexity inherent in the realization of the 21st century missionary operations of the Assemblies of God in Africa.

Abuja, the Federal capital territory of Nigeria, immediately comes to mind as the natural option because of its strategic developmental factors and the impact it is already making in the Africa Union. For example all member nations’ embassies are located in Abuja. Several International and non-governmental organizations are located in this fastest growing Africa mega city.

3. Constructing a regional website or digital portal for information sharing

As a result of the difficulty in communication within the region among member nations, the need to provide a special digital portal becomes an imperative. The need was expressed by the Director at the General Assembly in a memo presented to and approved by the Assembly in Gabon. The portal which shall be trilingual – English, French and Spanish, is currently under construction and shall be ready for use before 1st of December, 2006. The entire project will greatly enhance the communication quality and information access to the Rapid Evangelization of Africa Peoples (REAP) – Project. The internet site – www.reapafrica.org has been registered to this effect and is wholly dedicated to the actualization of the Project. A free hosting plan with another ICT Christian agency has been secured for three years.

4. Developing a Database – within the portal – accessible to all and updating such regularly

More than 2,000 distinct people groups are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the nine (9) sovereign nations that make up the region. These groups are in the different stages of “reachedness”. But today, the Assemblies of God missionary activities do not have comprehensive information on the degree to which it has reached these peoples. In effective, there are no known existing interactive databases on the Harvest Field, or the Harvest Force – human, material and financial resources - that can be properly matched and effectively deployed to complete the unfinished task, and produce the needed Harvest Yield.  The department through the Abuja center will engage in creating and managing the database. Proper definition of the degree to which the people groups or ethnic cultures have been reached shall be delineated.

5. Restructuring and strengthening existing Missionary agencies and departments of national churches

As earlier noted, the need to streamline missionary activity in the region will definitely involve the restructuring and strengthening of the existing missionary agencies and departments of national churches. It might be difficult in the beginning because, the national churches would have to make some constitutional amendment to accommodate the restructuring that would lead to the appointment of Missions Director to head Missions departments.

The need to promote and sustain biblical principles in raising support for missionary activities and projects and finally the urgent need to review the Bible School curriculum to include critical challenges in the contemporary Mission fields in Africa and to graduate missionaries, evangelists and pioneer pastors – with short and long term commitments in the project agenda.

The challenge of doing exactly this weighs heavily on the understanding and cooperation of the leadership of various national churches on one hand and the creation of enabling environment and resources to support these initiatives, by the proposed Regional Missions Board, on the other hand.

6. Maintaining sustained advocacy for the ripped Harvest Field, needed Harvest Force and the expected Harvest Yield:

One of the greatest weapons in wining a war is “sustained and effective advocacy”. Lack of it will both dim the vision and weaken the commitment of a people who otherwise would have been a great force. Consequently, the REAP Project will be sustained by the advocacy anchored in effective communication and mobilization of the national churches. A network of mobilisers will be deployed from time to time, while opportunities provided by Leadership Conferences, Missions Consultations and even General Council meetings of member countries will be employed. The main advocacy strategy will involve the use of “People Group Advocacy”. Prayer mobilization will also serve as a channel for such advocacy. People Group Advocates (PGA) will be encouraged. Details of these have been spelt out in the draft copy of the Regional Missions Manual.

7. Mobilizing, Training and Engaging National Field Surveys and teams

To facilitate the targeting of each of the people groups in Africa, there is overarching need to carry out an Impact Assessment Rating on each People group. In other words, to what extent has the AAGA member churches – Assemblies of God in Africa – impacted the various groups. This actually calls for field survey and a survey team would need to be sent for this. Consequent upon this, the need to mobilize, train and engage the team becomes very critical to the REAP PROJECT. The REAP project cannot be commenced without a preliminary field information that would inform the decision to target a given people group.

8. Defining the locations and targeting the Peoples

The various people groups have been categorized into seven, defining the degree to which the group has been reached. The degree of “reachedness” or “unreachedness” is based on the following parameters:

• C1 – Category 1 = Unevangelized by Any Church – Not Evangelized by Any Church
• C2 – Category 2 = Unevangelized by Evangelicals – Not Evangelized by any Evangelicals but by other Church
• C3 – Category 3 = Unevangelized by AoG – Not Evangelized by AoG, but by other Evangelicals
• C4 – Category 4 = Unchurched by Any Church - Evangelized by Any Church, but unchurched by any Church
• C5 – Category 5 = Unchurched by Any Evangelical – Churched by other Church but not evangelicals
• C6 – Category 6 = Unchurched by AoG – Churched by Evangelicals but unchurched by any AoG
• C7 – Category 7 = Churched by AoG – Churched by AoG indigenously

Usually, the Category 1, unevangelized by any church, becomes our Missions priority in the country of target and the REAP PROJECT depending on the available resources will focus on the peoples higher in the priority scale. Those in Category 7, though “not very urgent” could be classified under a priority on “Consolidation Scale”, because the Church need to consolidate its grip on the indigenous peoples, a tool for evangelization of the various communities within the “reached people”. A Project Profile is opened for each of the people groups identified and surveyed.

9. Clarifying the goals, objectives, strategies and Action Plans

Both the long term and short term goals, objectives, strategies and action plans need to be defined for each REAP PROJECT. This will depend heavily on the nature and challenges of missionary operation in the target area. A blanket approach will serve little purpose, since the socioeconomic or political considerations will be factored in the plan. The degree to which access is provided to the target will possibly define the specific goals, objectives and strategies. Having said that however, the REAP PROJECT generally require to have a common denominator, when Action Plan is being drawn. Some of the broad considerations are as follows:

• Getting the national church to accept enthusiastically to host the REAP PROJECT in their country should the CAAGA Executive Committee and General Assembly, through the recommendation of the Evangelism and Missions Department, decide to focus on the country.
• Empowering the Evangelism and Missions Department to mobilize human, material, financial and other resources towards the project. This will include adoption of the Project Budget, by member countries and the US World Missions Department.
• Mobilizing and Deploying all available resources into critical target towns for Taskforce Evangelism and principal people groups for Missionary activity using Adopt-A-People strategy. In order words, the selected towns in the country will require Taskforce Crusades and Saturation Evangelism strategies, while the people groups would be engaged in Missionary activity in all the people groups with higher Priority Impact Assessment Rating (IAR). Prayer Mobilization of the national churches would be critical to the success of each Mission. Example - REAP 2007: MISSION GABON
• Systematically executing the Action Plan and provide detailed report and account of the project. Post Project support fund shall be made available to the short term missionaries and the Missions department to consolidate the efforts for a period of 12 calendar months. This Follow-up Strategy is necessary if the accomplished task would be survived.
• Usually Executive Committee would approve the Action Plan and adopt the Budget before commencement of any Mission.

10. Mobilizing the Leadership and Ministers of the national churches

Mobilizing the Leadership and Ministers of each of the national church is critical to the mobilization of resources including prayer support. In order words, it is important the leadership is carried along in the vision of the Alliance. Generally, all the national leaders endorse the REAP project, but the specifics need to be communicated regularly and effectively. Also the need to clarify the financial and logistic implications of each Mission, at least 12 calendar months ahead of the program is very imperative. The need also to schedule the project in the national program is important. The relationship that will exist between the REAP project and each national Missions Board, where it exists, or the Executive Committee of member country would be through the Regional Missions Board.

Other sources of Mobilization include Minutes of the Executive Committee, General Assembly decisions, Letters from the President, MissionAfrica magazine and the web portal – www.reapafrica.org, among others will act as mobilization tools. The need to provide bilingual or tri-lingual Evangelism tools – English, French and Spanish – is critical. The department is working out solution.

11. Recruitment, Training and Deployment of Short-term Missionaries:

The department shall continually recruit, train and send short-term missionaries to all the people groups. These 21st Century Missionary manpower development must take into account a number of issues that are peculiar to Africa. The continent stricken with extreme poverty, disease, HIV/AIDS, high unemployment and other issues of critical political, social, cultural and economic concern, cannot be “rapidly evangelism”, without factoring these challenges. The design of a new plan for Africa Evangelism, must adopt a new paradigm, and strategies that may deviate from the traditional. Besides, missionary structures within the national churches must be activated along this line, and it must address the challenges posed by the “digital divide”, that has impeded effective communication, information and manpower sharing, among other things. The CAAGA constitution has placed as a priority the need to communicate and share information within the sub region. Following this the following categories of missionaries would be recruited, trained and deployed:

• Short term/part time field based missionaries, evangelists, pastors, Church Workers
• Short term/full time field based missionaries, evangelists, pastors, Church Workers
• Long term/part time field based missionaries, evangelists, pastors, Church Workers
• Long term/full time field based missionaries, evangelists, pastors, Church Workers
• Long term non-residential (non field based) missionaries, evangelists, pastors, Church Workers
• Details of their functions are spelt out in the ADOPT-A-PEOPLE (International Edition)

12. Focusing on Unreached People Groups and Praying on site

One of the main things the Evangelism and Missions Department of CAAGA would do, would be to identify the various distinct people groups that the Rapid Evangelism project would focus. In doing this seven (7) key things stand out clearly:

• Survey the Peoples with digital Documentation – video, audio, text, pictures and building a comprehensive dossier on the peoples.
• Categorize the groups according to their degree of reachedness or otherwise – that is the Status of Evangelization – Seven Degrees.
• Encourage a network of people group advocates towards each of the people groups identified and surveyed. Providing Advocate’s Information Jacket, which will facilitate prayers and engagement process.
• Match each people group with churches or individuals that would want to adopt them and mobilize towards the process.
• Promote and Organize Praying-On-Site strategy for each of the people groups as and when possible between 2007 – 2010.
• Raise missionary couple volunteers – in keeping with the required categories – particularly those willing to use their resources to target and reach the people.
• Raise synergy and strategic partnership with adopting agencies and national and international non-government organizations that will identify with specific challenges in the effort to evangelize the peoples.
• Promote campaign that member national churches should encourage churches and individuals to float faith-based or non sectarian non-governmental organizations to engage in critical problems of the Africa peoples, in partnership with the Department.

The Table summarizes the Status of Unreached People in the Region:

UNREACHED PEOPLES OF AAGA CENTRAL AFRICA:
Country	Population	Total # of Peoples	# least Reached Peoples	% of Reached Peoples	Least Reached Peoples Population	% of Pop. Least Reched	Primary Religion
Cameroon	16,240,000	284	15	5.3	2,197,000	13.5 %	Christianity
Central African Republic	4,030,000	86	7	8.1	397,000	9.8 %	Christianity
Chad	9,520,000	140	73	52.1	5,178,000	54.4 %	Islam
Congo, Democratic Republic	57,540,000	245	5	2.0	96,000	0.2 %	Christianity
Congo, The Republic	3,953,000	75	3	4.0	36,000	0.9%	Christianity
Equatorial Guinea	503,000	24	2	8.3	8,600	1.7%	Christianity
Gabon	1,383,000	56	5	8.9	35,000	2.5%	Christianity
Nigeria	131,285,000	509	76	14.9	45,756,000	34.9%	Christianity
Sao Tome & Principe	155,000	7	0	0.0	0	0.0%	Christianity
TOTAL	224,609,000	1426	186	7.6%	53,703,600	23.9%	CHRISTIANITY

# - denotes NUMBER
% - denotes PERCENTAGE
Pop. - denotes POPULATION

13. Raising funds for Missionary engagements and Church Planting

While the department will encourage “adopt-a-people” strategy, it will be worthwhile for the department to set up special funds for the evangelization of Central Africa. The mission’s funds will be designated into five major aspects:

• Research and Planning unit – for surveys, documentation and monitoring
• Taskforce Evangelism in targeted towns
• Missionary mobilization, training and deployment
• Church Planting and development
• Administrative or operational

The 2007 Project Budget in this report has factored these sectors.

14. Matching Adopting Agencies with targeted Peoples

As earlier noted in No 12 above, the matching exercise will be in line with the Department’s Operational Guideline and Manual, which a Regional Missions Board must adopt and the Executive Committee approve. It also takes into consideration the request of the adopting agencies. Where no specific request is made concerning a people group, the department will on its own undertake the matching and persuade the adopting agency to endorse its commitment.

15. Organizing Annual Strategic Missionary Conferences for information sharing

In August 2002, the CAAGA organized a zonal missionary conference, hosted by Nigeria Assemblies of God, in which issues that concerned the evangelization of the sub-region was underscored. It is therefore going to be an annual event in various parts of the region to encourage the information sharing. Sometimes such conferences can be integrated along the CAAGA Leadership Conferences. In that case the Missions Consultations will be held as part of the Leadership Conference. To further encourage information sharing, the department has registered a domain name and the website will soon be up and running at www.reapafrica.org. A digital portal will also be opened to enable database development on all the people groups.

16. Networking and Strategic Partnership within and beyond the Central Africa

Many agencies outside Africa and the Central Africa in particular would want to be a part of what God will be doing in the next few years. The department will do everything possible to network the various agencies within and outside Africa, or the AG family who we consider will be a tremendous help to the furtherance of the gospel in the region. Most of the countries in the region are economically poor and would require the assistance of the various agencies to identify, Project List and partner with the national church. In most cases, the department will make definite request that National churches like AGWM of the United State, take up REAP PROJECT, and give a missionary project number to it. In other cases, national churches would be requested to either allow “Partnership Drive” programs annually to sell these projects during their national programs and/or include it in their national Missions budget. In any case, the department shall also endeavour to create “an economic environment” and seek means to support itself.